The Second Swing soon began.
lisa and Javir stood between a few different groups of nobles. As the music kicked in and the dancers ca out, lisa stood with her arms around Javir's shoulders while Javir held her by the small of her back.
They were both all smiles as they moved back and forth.
"When was the last ti we got to do anything like this?"
"Never, if I rember correctly," Javir tilted her head to think.
"That's a damn cri!" lisa complained.
"To be fair, l, it isn't just a you thing. I simply do not enjoy dancing very much."
"Yeah, right," lisa said, grinning and looking back at the older woman with narrowed eyes. "Is that why you're holding back giggles right now?"
"Excuse , Miss Blackfla, but you must not quite understand." Javir put on an overly haughty tone as she said, "Javir Folden does not giggle. No, she is far too above such crude-"
She broke out into a fit of giggles then and there as lisa reached behind her with her tail and ticked her side.
"AH!" Javir wrapped lisa up in a bear hug. "You bratty little..."
For a mont, lisa forgot all about the reality of the current situation, as she began to pretend to run away from Javir while the older woman chased her around the ballroom.
Soon, Javir caught her.
They ended up by a wall. Javir took lisa by her wrists and pinned her to it.
Smirking victoriously, she asked:
"When did you get so fast, you damned mouse?"
lisa arrogantly grinned up at her.
She reached behind Javir with her tail and pulled her closer.
"Well, since you never wanted to train properly, soone else has been. And, guess what? Apparently, magic isn't the only thing I have a talent for. I've been getting faster and stronger every day. I guess I never needed you for that, to begin with."
Javir raised a brow at her.
"Please. Raven?" She asked and lisa nodded. "Skilled as she may be, she's still just an apprentice herself. I could do a far better job."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"So," lisa went and locked her arms around Javir's shoulders again like she had when they'd been dancing. Only, this ti they weren't moving at all, and lisa was doing it mainly to keep Javir from running away. "Why don't you?"
lisa saw Javir's gaze drop. Her eyes seed to hone in on lisa's lips. Reaching up, she placed a gloved hand on lisa's cheek, gently.
"Perhaps..."
The air was heavy. For so reason, it beca a bit tougher to speak for lisa.
"... Just a lesson or two," lisa proposed sweetly, her voice soft and quiet.
She could always feel it.
She could always tell that there'd been sothing there beneath the exterior, beneath the excuses Javir usually flung at her anyti she'd asked the woman to teach her how to fight.
She'd accepted the initial reason, that Javir didn't want to ruin lisa's form sohow and that she needed "the right" teacher. But, two things had made that reasoning ring hollow now.
For one, lisa had seen Javir fight. The woman was not "decent" as she said. lisa didn't believe that. Unless, of course, the standard for swordsmanship in this world was far higher than lisa had ever anticipated.
And, two, lisa was a young adult now. How much longer was she ant to wait for "the one" to arrive?
"Co on," lisa said taking one of Javir's hands. She pressed a light kiss to its back. Javir allowed it, her eyes and lisa's firmly connected now. "Just a bit... I have to learn how to fight from sowhere, right?"
At this point, they were so close their chests were almost pressed against one another, with lisa's tail wrapping around Javir in a full circle.
Javir's eyes half-closed.
"Fine..." She finally said, leaning in. "If..."
"Sothing feels weird."
---
{Javir}
Both won flinched.
Javir pulled back, clearing her throat. lisa retrieved her tail, shaking her head.
Standing behind Javir was Raven, whose grey eyes were scanning the ballroom.
"Sothing feels weird."
Javir ripped herself away from lisa in an instant, like the heavens themselves had just slapped her.
[What... I...?]
She shook her head.
Her heart had been pounding in her ears and she hadn't even known it.
Javir took a deep breath, forcing her racing heart to slow. She turned to face Raven, her expression carefully neutral.
"What's the matter, Raven? What seems odd?"
Raven's grey eyes scanned the ballroom, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"Well... that's just it, Professor. Nothing seems odd. And that's what's bothering ."
Javir raised an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"
"I don't know. It's too perfect," Raven muttered, her voice low. "No whispering workers, no clear getaway routes. I find it hard to believe the Shadow Mages won't try anything tonight, and yet... there's no sign of an impending attack."
Swallowing her embarrassnt, Javir allowed herself to consider Raven's words with a clearer head.
[Shit,] Javir thought. [She's right. This is all a little too clean.]
"Keep looking," Javir instructed, her voice taking on a hint of authority. "Check every corner, every shadow. If sothing's off, I want to know about it."
"Will do."
Raven nodded, bowing slightly before lting back into the crowd.
"..." Javir and lisa glanced at each other for just a second and turned away.
Javir turned back to lisa, suddenly acutely aware of their proximity. She took a step back, clearing her throat.
"lisa, go ahead and keep mingling with the nobles. I think I should go and do so inspections of my own."
lisa nodded, a flicker of confusion — and was that disappointnt? — crossing her face.
"Of course. But, uh... Be careful, okay?"
"Always am," Javir replied with a wink that felt forced, even to her.
As they parted ways, an awkward tension hanging between them, Javir couldn't shake the feeling that she'd just narrowly avoided crossing a line.
[Focus, dammit,] she said in her mind, over and over again, making her way towards the kitchens. [You're here to protect her, not...]
But as she walked, mories she'd long suppressed ca flooding back.
Almost a decade ago, just before Javir left Syux.
Another nim girl, just like lisa. The student Javir had grown so fond of. The one who'd changed how Javir herself viewed nim.
She had been sweet and lovely. Her bright smile like radiant sunlight, her calm, but subtly intelligent deanor... She'd been exactly the type of student Javir had imagined herself tutoring when she first took that teaching job and moved on from her old one.
But, then...
Blood.
The look of despair in that girl's eyes as she died in Javir's arms, struck down by an assassin's blade...
Javir had just about moved on, just about forgotten it all, and this mont brought those mories back.
[Fuck,] Javir thought, her steps faltering. She took a mont to stop, sighing and letting her shoulders slump. [Right. Right... I'm so stupid.]
Even though she'd already admitted defeat, the mories wouldn't stop hamring themselves back into her head. That nim couldn't cast magic like lisa, she'd been given a scholarship to Syux Academy to pursue becoming a scholar, and yet people had still considered her such a threat that assassins had taken her life and everyone around Javir treated her like she was strange for caring about it.
[And now lisa...]
Javir felt like she could just about lt into the floor.
In truth, this had been why she'd refused to train the girl.
The excuse she'd used initially had been true, to an extent. If Javir had started teaching a girl with no experience at all how to fight, lisa wouldn't actually learn how to fight. She would have learned how to fight like Javir. There was a difference.
But, Javir couldn't deny that at so point, she should have just started anyway. Better to have so tricks up her sleeve than none at all. But, she hadn't.
Because she'd always been afraid that if she spent too much ti with lisa at the academy, the girl would begin heading down the sa path that other nim girl had.
Not realizing, of course, that lisa had been slowly chipping away at that wall Javir tried to keep between them with every year that passed. Now, it was basically nothing more than rubble on the floor.
"I need a fucking drink," she muttered, changing course for the bar.
Experience tales at My Virtual Library Empire
As she went to one of the tables nearby, displaying dozens of bottles of varying types of liquor like soldiers standing on a battlefield, Javir picked out the strongest liquor she could see and poured so of its contents into a cup.
[I don't want that to happen again,] she thought, downing her drink in one gulp. [But... How close can I be to her? How close is *too close*? How do I keep a target from forming on her back just cause I'm around?]
But even as she asked these questions, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered sothing.
[You fool. That target is already there, big and bold. Your presence obviously isn't going to do anything to make it brighter at this point.]
She sighed.
"... That excuse probably stopped being valid years ago," Javir murmured into her alcohol. "I should start training her in swordsmanship too."
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